


The Things We Haven’t Talked About

by AdrianaintheSnow



Series: Labeled [9]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Implied/Mentioned Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, M/M, Past Child Abuse, School Shootings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22789405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdrianaintheSnow/pseuds/AdrianaintheSnow
Summary: Patton and Logan have noticed some concerning behavior from Virgil in their month with him. Beyond the flinching and haunted look in his eyes courtesy of his last foster father, there’s something else of concern for Patton and Logan and they really aren’t equipped to deal with it. They enlist some help from a couple of friends.So remember the fact that at 14 Virgil was in the middle of a school shooting?
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Dr. Emile Picani/Sleep | Remy Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Labeled [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616662
Comments: 78
Kudos: 546





	1. Chapter 1

“I would like to invite you and Emile to our house this Friday for lunch.” Logan said two seconds after Remy flopped down at the table for their bimonthly coffee meeting. Without even a hello, Remy might add. Not that he necessarily expected one after this many years, not when Logan clearly had something on his mind.

Remy made a show of groaning. “Logan, we agreed no more double dates after last time.”

He frowned and Remy wasn’t sure if it was because he was dense or because he was an asshole pretending to be dense. Most days it could go either way. “I still do not see what the issue was.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Remy scoffed, listing them off on his fingers. “Maybe it was the fact that you took all of my date’s attention for an hour talking about the philosophy of the mind. Or maybe it was because when not commandeering my boyfriend, you and Patton were teaming up to embarrass me as much as possible. Or perhaps it had something to do with how I had to see you feel up my boss under the dinner table. Take your pick.”

“You have interacted with Patton and I many times and should not be surprised by our physical intimacy, I’m not sure what you were expecting to happen when Patton first met Emile, and you were the one who was lamenting over the worry that Emile and I wouldn’t get along for a week before the event.”

Remy gave him a pouty frown and took a long sip of his iced coffee.

“Besides. This is not a date.”

“Then what is it?” Remy asked.

“A meeting.” Yeah alright bitch.

“Not very specific there, nerd.”

“It’s a private meeting,” he said.

Remy sat back in his chair and eyed him. “What kind of private?”

“It concerns Virgil.”

“Oh,” Remy said with a blink. “Yeah, alright. I’ll check with Emile if he’ll be able to come by then.”

“Thank you,” Logan replied.

“Everything is like, okay right?”

He paused. “There is no time sensitive issue,” was Logan’s frankly evasive as shit answer, but Remy chose to accept it.

He gave him one last suspicious glare over his coffee before smacking his lips. “So… that fucker Brian do anything else stupid since we last talked?”

Emile had no idea what he was doing here. He’d never actually been in Patton and Logan’s house before, though he knew Remy had been many times. He also wasn’t sure why they had invited them over for lunch out of the blue. Emile would have thought they’d just all go to a restaurant if they wanted to get together. What’s more, it didn’t seem like they just wanted to get together, not with the weird tension in the air or the way their dining room looked set up more for a business meeting than a lunch.

Patton had gone to get drinks from the kitchen and Emile eyed Logan. There was a strange tension around his eyes that made Emile curious. They’d only arrived a few minutes ago and he’d been acting rather oddly the whole time.

Of course, Emile didn’t know much about Logan, so perhaps he didn’t have a good frame of reference. It was almost strange, how little Emile felt he knew him. Usually Emile was quite good at getting a read on people and he’d met Logan many times over the last year he and Remy had been dating, but he certainly didn’t feel like he knew him.

He knew Patton much better at this point. Patton was the more personable side of their relationship and willing to talk to anyone about anything. Between that and how much Remy talked about him, Emile felt like he knew him quite well.

Logan on the other hand could be quite closed off and Emile had trouble getting a read on him. He had an… odd relationship with Remy where they both insisted that they despised each other, but also met up regularly to gossip.

Emile himself enjoyed talking to him. He was a smart man and well versed in all manners of things including some that overlapped with Emile’s own interests. He never had any problems finding topics to talk about with Logan, but he’d noticed that few of those topics dipped into anything remotely personal… unless you counted his wiliness to declare his affections for Patton which he was very willing to do in word and deed… even in public.

Patton returned and passed out the drinks before sitting next to Logan and folding his hands in front of him. Logan and Patton shared a brief look before Logan turned to Emile and Remy.

“So,” Logan began, placing both hands palm down against the tabletop, “as the two of you are aware, Patton and I have recently begun to foster a child named Virgil. Emile, I am unsure how much Remy has told you about his condition when he first came into our custody or the circumstances around how that happened.”

Emile frowned. “Um. Not really anything. I just knew you had gotten a kid.” Remy had briefly explained why he was buying the two of them an ‘It’s a boy!’ greeting card from the supermarket.

“As I have said before,” Remy said. “You know. To someone else. I stitch, I don’t snitch.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Yes Remy. I am aware.” He turned back to Emile. “The details are not all known to me, and I don’t feel comfortable divulging all of the information I do know as it is not my story to tell. However, the basics are that he comes from an abusive situation and currently there is an investigation into his past foster father’s behavior.”

Emile grimaced. He certainly wasn’t a stranger to the fact that things like that happened in the world considering his chosen field.

“We would normally not ask,” Patton said. “We understand the problems inherit in us asking considering the fact that we know each other personally, but…”

“There are extenuating circumstances,” Logan finished.

“Extenuating circumstances?” Emile asked.

Logan and Patton shared a look and Patton reached over to squeeze his husband’s hand. Logan looked back at them. “There are very few people in my life that I feel I can trust with certain information about myself, but the both of you have proven yourselves as trustworthy in the different ways I have known you.”

“Holy shit,” Remy said suddenly, sitting up straight.

Patton puffed out an amused breath.

Logan inclined his head to him. “I am, of course, aware that Remy already knows the secret I am about to divulge, and I appreciate his discretion for the past two and a half decades.”

“Oh fuck,” Remy cursed. Emile turned to him briefly and then back to Logan.

Logan took a small breath and then said evenly, “I am Bluebird.”

_What?_

“I knew it!” Remy said. _What??_

“As I just said,” Logan ground out. “Yes, I know you knew.”

“Two weeks,” Remy said. “Less than two weeks from the day I met Logan as Logan. That’s all it took.”

“This,” Logan said to Patton. “This is why I never wanted to tell him. This.”

“Just let him get it out of his system.”

“Bitch, I’ve been vague posting at you for two and a half decades.”

“Vague posting?” Logan asked. “Where have you been posting it?”

“N-no, sweetie,” Patton said.

“This one’s going to have a lot of fun with a teenager,” Remy said to Patton. “I spent about 2 hours with the boy and concluded that he’s made up of 85% meme.”

Emile finally found his voice. “So,” he said pressing his fingers to his lips. “I know this is probably not the reaction you were expecting, but _you_ set me up with Remy?” Their relationship had just gotten even more confusing.

“Ah, yes,” Logan confirmed.

“You what?!” Remy asked.

“I met Bluebird as a patient after the school shooting last year. He told me to go talk to you at the party where we met.”

Remy turned to Logan, mouth agape.

“I had grown annoyed with your constant ‘fun poking’ at my relationship with Patton and thought of a way to make sure you could never do so again,” Logan said unconcerned.

Patton snorted.

“Okay,” Remy said standing up, “I guess that makes me a villain now because I’m gonna fight him.”

“Sit down Remy,” Logan said.

“Fight me.”

“Sit _down_ Remy,” Patton said. He grumbled something under his breath and sat. “Okay. We have gotten a bit off track. This is about Virgil.”

“Yeah,” Remy said deflating a bit.

Logan nodded shortly and turned to Emile. “As we have said, we normally would not ask and if it was just about him coming from an abusive household, we would have found a different psychiatrist. However, the reason I needed to tell you my superhero identity is because he is Shadow Caster.”

“Shadow Caster is 15?” Emile asked.

“Yes. His activities under the mask have to do with his unideal homelife, which are certainly problems he needs to talk through. However, though that is a very important issue, it is not the main concern that drove us to talk to you in particular.”

Emile titled his head in confusion. “What is the main concern?” he asked.

“The school shooting last year,” Patton answered, and oh, oh right. Shadow Caster had been a part of that. Everyone in the city knew that. He’d teamed up with Bluebird and helped take down the shooter himself.

Shadow Caster was also, apparently, 15.

“Oh,” said Emile.

“They were his classmates,” Patton said, and he looked like he was about to cry. “He _knew_ them _,_ and he saw _that_. And as far as the school was concerned, he wasn’t anywhere near the carnage so it’s not like they made him go talk to someone and his ex-foster father certainly didn’t. He probably wouldn’t have even talked about it with anyone if he’d had the option because it would have reveled him as Shadow Caster. We don’t… we don’t think he’s dealt with it at all.” Then he said more to himself. “God, I had therapy about it, and I wasn’t even in the building.”

Logan took a moment to lean over and kiss him softly on the forehead before turning his attention back to Emile. “You offered your services to those who were affected by the school shooting, including me, and I very much appreciate that. We were wondering if you be willing to do that for him?”

There wasn’t really a choice to be made. How was he supposed to say no to this? “Of course,” he agreed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we have to talk to Virgil. It didn’t turn out as angsty as anticipated, but there are a few cutting lines in there.

Logan had always thought that he was fairly good at being unreadable to people. He had, after all kept his secret identity mostly a secret for decades from an entire city. People often noted that he was hard to anticipate or understand. Yet, Virgil often proved a counterpoint to this. Perhaps Logan was not as good at hiding his intentions as he thought or maybe Virgil was simply hyper-sensitive to changing behaviors in adults. Either way, despite the fact that Logan thought he was not behaving any differently than any other day, he could see the boy growing tenser and tenser as the car ride home from the high school progressed.

He tried to engage him in conversation, but his responses defaulted to quiet, concise answers to Logan’s questions and nothing more. Eventually, they fell into silence which seemed to bother Virgil more, but Logan had no idea how to fix it. He could even see a small shadow from the corner of his eye snake up to curl around Virgil’s ankle, barely noticeable and hidden mostly by his backpack. Usually not a good sign.

Patton was waiting for them in the driveway and, while Logan didn’t fault his anxiousness about the impending conversation, the fact that he wasn’t waiting in the house made Virgil curl into himself as though trying to melt into the passenger seat and disappear.

Logan reached over to put his hand on his shoulder as he had gotten into the habit of doing when needing to comfort the boy, and he flinched back as though Logan had swung at him. Then, upon realizing what he’d done, he cringed even more as though he expected to be hit for expecting to be hit. Logan swallowed a lump in his throat and got out of the car.

Virgil followed him, head down. Patton’s eyes met Logan’s briefly before turning his attention back to the boy.

“Hey, kiddo,” Patton said. “Was school okay?” Patton did not try to touch him like he normally would, Logan noticed. Logan wished he had the ability to read body language that his husband did.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad,” Patton said, opening the front door to let Logan and Virgil in and then following in behind them. “Okay,” Patton said when the door shut behind them, clearly not wanting to wait and prolong Virgil’s anticipatory anxiety. “Logan and I want to have a quick conversation with you. You don’t need to worry about it though.”

The boy did not seem sure if he should believe him or not. He stuck his hands into his hoody pocket and bit his lip, but he also didn’t start actually panicking yet.

Patton gave him a soft smile. “So, Logan and I have been talking a bit, and we think you should see a psychiatrist.”

As the words registered, Virgil got that spooked kind of haunted look in his eyes that never failed to make Logan shudder. “I…” he said, his lower lip wobbling. “Did I… did do something wrong? I’m sorry. I-I was trying to be good. I can be good. I can do better.”

“No, no,” Patton said, already chocked up himself. He carefully moved his hands to hold Virgil’s face and wiped at the tears starting to escape his eyes with his thumbs. “No, honey, this isn’t a punishment. Shh.”

“But, but I had to have done something wrong if you want to fix me.”

“Oh sweetie,” Patton said.

“You having done something wrong is quite the opposite of our reasoning behind this,” Logan said, “and we won’t be forcing this on you. We just thought you might like to have a choice to talk to someone.

“Why?” he asked.

“We’ve noticed some things about your behavior,” Logan said. “You seem to have trouble sleeping most of the time and often have nightmares when you do sleep. You also had an anxiety attack over the sound of me dropping a book last week. We are worried that, among other problems relating to a negative self-image and trust issues, you might have some repressed trauma from the school shooting that took place last year.”

The fact that Virgil actually physically recoiled from the reminder of the event only served to reinforce the point.

“Sweetie,” Patton said, slowly moving his hands to his sides after Virgil had violently jerked away from his touch, “There’s nothing wrong with getting help for problems in your head. I promise. We are just making this an option because we want to help you.”

“Both Patton and I have gone to therapy many times in our lives. In fact, both of saw a mental health professional after that event ourselves. Patton because he had to operate on some of the victims and myself because I was involved in the conflict. Much as you were.”

“You both went to therapy for that?” he asked.

“Of course,” Logan said. “It was a traumatic experience for all involved and mental health is important. In fact, that was not the first time either of us had a form of therapy.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Nope,” Patton said. “I saw a therapist for 5 years in my early 30s and Logan and I went to relationship counseling for 2 years from the time we got engaged until about 6 months into our marriage.”

“You did?”

“Mhmm.”

Virgil considered for a moment. “How would that work?”

“Well, clearly the psychiatrist would have to know about your alter ego. With that in mind, we chose someone trustworthy and asked if they would be willing to counsel you.”

“His name is Emile,” Patton offered. “He’s actually Remy’s boyfriend.”

Virgil lit up a little bit at Remy’s name and Logan suddenly remembered why he kept the man around despite how exasperating he could be. “I think he mentioned his boyfriend a couple of times.”

“He probably did,” Patton said with a smile. “He’s quite smitten with him.”

“Emile is very good at what he does. I actually met him when he was counselling me after the same event, and he knows both of our secret identities so you wouldn’t need to hold anything back.”

Virgil dithered on the spot for a moment.

“It is entirely up to you,” Logan said, “and I’m certain the option would still be there if you changed your mind later.”

“Can I think about it?” Virgil asked.

“Of course,” Logan said. “Would you like to meet Emile in a more social setting before you choose? We were going to invite them both over for dinner tonight, but we can not do so if you’d like.” The two had left when Logan had gone to get Virgil and had agreed to wait to see if they should come back until after they’d discussed it with the child.

“I’d like to meet him,” Virgil decided after a moment.

“Okay,” Patton said, “then go drop off your backpack and I’ll finish getting dinner ready.”


End file.
